


In Living Memory

by twilightshadow



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE, also major liberties taken with patient confidentiality, angsty, but not graphic, maybe slightly triggery for depression, remembering, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 08:57:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightshadow/pseuds/twilightshadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally posted on FF.net. Pre-season 2, post season 1. Sherlock is presumed killed by Moriarty in the blast at the swimming pool. John has been living for the past three years in 221B, surrounded by nothing but his memories. Not written as slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on FF.net ages ago, right before season 2 was broadcast, and is pretty much my look into John Watson's head for most of season one, hence the major spoilers. 
> 
> The ending is therefore, obviously, totally inaccurate - you remember all those post-TGG theories being thrown around? This is one of them. Therefore, I apologise if you think it's crap. 
> 
> It's as in character as I can make it. And...well. What more can I say, but enjoy xx

_“How’s your blog going?”_

_“Yeah, good…” I cleared my throat. “Very good…”_

_“You haven’t written a word, have you?”_

The words echoed in his head as he stared at the blank post in front of him for what seemed like the millionth time.

_“You just wrote ‘still has trust issues.’”_

_“And you read my writing upside down.”_

Trapped in an endless loop. That was how it had seemed, before…

_“Nothing happens to me.”_

Nothing had. Not one thing, in three years. He snapped his old, now clanky laptop closed in frustration. His head was as blank as it had ever been, in those long and utterly pointless ‘therapy’ sessions.

John Watson stared around the quiet, tidy living room of 221B. Even now, after all these years, the silence, and the lack of mad, rake-thin, curly-haired consulting detective as he banged around the flat, complaining because Molly hadn’t given him enough teeth for his current experiment or Lestrade wasn’t consulting him on a case that had an ‘obvious solution,’ seemed unnatural.  John had learnt to tune his ramblings out unless he was being used as a sounding board. Now he found himself constantly listening for it, or for the banging of feet on the stairs as he bounded up them, ready with some new and insanely brilliant deduction… ‘Stupid. He’s not coming back. He’s never coming…’

 

_I had come home, unlike many of my comrades. I had seen so many things in Afghanistan – the rather harsh beauty of the desert, the picturesque buildings that retained a certain charm even after they’d been bombed out, or had their walls riddled with bullets after a particularly brutal engagement. Other things, too. An eighteen year old bleeding out in my arms as I desperately tried to staunch his arterial wound. Mothers running, keening and wailing down the streets after a vicious bombing, their children trapped in the burning wreckage they left behind. My best friend, a Northumbrian chap with the loudest laugh in the whole damn war, shot through the eye next to me. Over in a flash. My name being screamed by Corporals and Captains and Sergeants up and down the line and knowing that I could only get to one at a time. Knowing that, by the time I get there, most of this multitude of faceless men would be too far gone to be saved._

_But they never left me. Even after the stray bullet that had ripped through my shoulder as our Jeep turned over, even after the pain in that shoulder had faded and my leg injury became a vague stiffness, after the long flight home, the discharge, the days in the care centre stretching into weeks…I would wake, sweating and shaking, choking back tears as the adrenaline faded from my body._

_At first I thought the blog would be a good idea. I soon found that so little happened to me I wondered what the point was as I stared at the screen. ‘This is your life now, John. A blank sheet of paper. How depressing.’ Used to the rigours of life on tour, I wasn’t exactly well adapted to inactivity._

_‘Face it, Johnny. Nothing is ever going to happen to you again.’ I thought as I sat on my bed and watched the dawn break through the crack in the curtains. Yet another nightmare, yet another day._

 

Returned to that state of inactivity – well, not quite, he still went into the surgery – John had found his old depression returning. But ‘trust issues’ still applied, and he would never dream of asking for help.

Mrs Hudson guessed, yes, as she brought him a cup of tea some afternoons, tried to get him to chat, but since the doctor would neither confirm nor deny her suspicions, there was little she could do. He knew what she thought, and she knew that he knew, yet he still said nothing. His silence was worrying. The only people he spoke to, the only people he had spoken to in nearly a year and a half now were his patients.

She wished Sherlock would return, that he hadn’t been killed. They had been good for one another. Mad Sherlock needed someone to massage his ego and stop him getting so bored, not least because it saved her having to fix the walls or replace the kitchen cupboards. Steady John had needed someone to inject the adrenaline back into his system. They were two halves of the same whole. Mrs Hudson was many things – a landlady, arthritic, getting on in years – but she was not blind and the man that lay on the sofa most evenings, staring at the ceiling, needed his detective.

 

_The phrase goes ‘stuck in a rut.’ I wondered what I was going to do. I hated the thought of leaving London, but on an army pension? I shuddered at the thought of what would be available for that kind of money._

_I simply had to get out of the centre, so I went for a walk in the park, limping heavily on my stick. ‘Barely thirty-three and already a cripple,’ I thought every time I looked at it._

_I supposed it was a nice day – a nice day for London. I wasn’t paying much attention, so it came as a surprise when somebody hailed me from behind._

_“John? John Watson!”_

_I turned. An overweight man of about my age got up from a bench and approached me. He seemed oddly familiar…_

_“Stamford? Mike Stamford, we were at Barts together!”_

_Oh._

_“Yes, Mike, hello.” Mike had been one of those chaps that flew under the radar – likeable, clever in his own right, but would never set the world on fire. We’d been friendly acquaintances and frequent lab partners rather than really close friends. I tried to disguise the fact that I had completely forgotten his existence up until now._

_We bought coffee and sat on the bench for a while. He seemed surprised at how much I’d changed. Obviously he hadn’t realised that when a man is stationed for a long time in a war zone, it tends to change him in obvious ways._

_Inevitably, the conversation turned to what I was going to do now. “Couldn’t Harry help?”_

_An image flashed up of me living with my alcoholic, emotionally unstable, regularly broke sister. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”_

_“I dunno, get a flatshare?”_

_The man was clearly trying too hard. “Come on. Who’d want me for a flatmate?”_

_To my surprise and confusion, the man began to chuckle._

_“What?”_

_“You’re the second person to say that to me today.”_

_Despite the worrying images that came into my mind at the thought of someone who was as bad as I was, I would jump at any chance to stay in London and my curiosity piqued. “Who was the first?”_

London. Not his childhood home, but where he’d come to escape a family falling apart. The place he’d first felt at home. Funny that, now it felt like his prison. So many memories…and yet, there was still nowhere else he would rather be. Just in case…but Mycroft had made that perfectly plain, and he had always been more forthcoming with his true agenda than his brother. He still called around, once a week, without fail. Most of his visits descended into a loaded silence.

 

His violin case still leant against the wall. John hadn’t touched it. There were many memories surrounding this as well, usually of being kept awake at 2am as his flatmate wailed out a tune on it to help him think. But the strongest was the first day they’d met, even though not a single note had been played…

 

_The upstairs lab at Bart’s had been revamped. New clinical white tables lined the walls and the place smelled of cleaning rather than spilt chemicals. There was also only one occupant, a whip-lean young man of around twenty-eight with cropped curly black hair bent avidly over a microscope. He barely looked up from what he was doing as we entered._

_“Bit different from my day,” I idly observed, glancing around the almost unfamiliar room._

_“You’ve no idea,” chuckled Mike._

_“Mike, can I borrow your phone, there’s no signal on mine.” The man in the corner didn’t so much as glance up as he made his request. He had a musical baritone._

_Mike gave me a look which told me he was used to this. “And what’s wrong with a landline?”_

_“I prefer to text.” He still didn’t glance up. I realised this must be the potential flatmate. ‘Bit rude, aren’t you?’_

_Mike rolled his eyes and checked his pockets. “Sorry, other coat.”_

_‘May as well be nice to the chap if I might be sharing a flat with him,’ I thought. “Here, use mine.”_

_The young man glanced up as though seeing me for the first time. “Oh…thank you.” He stood up and I got my first good look at him._

_He was like a cat, the way he unfolded himself from his stool and languidly strolled over to me. Over six feet of well-cut suit and high cheekbones, towering over my own 5ft 9”.There was something magnetic about him – he seemed to fill the room, though there was nothing on his person, no badge or insignia to denote authority. I wondered if he even worked here._

_“This is a friend of mine,” said Mike. “John Watson.”_

_He grabbed the phone and flipped it up. “Afghanistan or Iraq?”_

_Floored, I glanced at Mike. He smiled._

_“Sorry, what?”_

_“Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?” He looked at me, as though annoyed at having to repeat himself._

_“…Afghanistan. Sorry how did you…?”_

_“Ah, Molly, coffee, thank you.” We were interrupted , this time by a young and pretty woman holding a steaming mug, which the tall man accepted. “What happened to the lipstick?”_

_“It…wasn’t working for me.”_

_“Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth’s too small now.” He was already walking away._

_“Okay…” She left. ‘Definitely a history there. Probably unrequited attachment on her part, poor girl.’ But there was no time to think more on it._

_“How do you feel about the violin?”_

_‘Derailed for the second time in less than a minute Watson. Who is this guy?’ Feeling like a total idiot, all I could repeat was, “What?”_

_“I play the violin when I’m thinking, sometimes I don’t talk for days on end – would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”_

_‘And again.’ “You told him about me?” I asked Mike._

_Mike shook his head, that small smile still in place. “Not a word.”_

_So the guy had just pulled it out of thin air. Again. I didn’t appreciate this, this random deducing and secret telling. I could already tell there would be no such thing as privacy in this ‘flatshare.’_

_“Then who said anything about flatmates?” I asked defensively. A small voice in the back of my head said **Still has trust issues…**_

_“I did,” said the man breezily, now pulling on a coat. “Told Mike this morning I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, just after lunch, with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t a difficult leap.”_

_His last words sounded so patronising it was difficult not to snap out a blunt response about manners. Instead what I said was “How did you know about Afghanistan?”_

_This was ignored, which rankled. “Got my eye on a nice little place in central London, together we should be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow, 7 o’clock. Sorry, must dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”_

_By now utterly bewildered by this frankly bizarre and more than a little disturbing exchange, I went for the principle that attack was the best form of defence. “Is that it?” I asked sharply as the lean man brushed past me._

_He swivelled. “Is that what?”_

_“We’ve only just met, and we’re going to go look at a flat.”_

_“Problem?” And now he was the one sounding confused. I bit down a stream of profanities you can only pick up from prolonged exposure to servicemen at this presumptuous..._

_“We don’t know a thing about each other, I don’t know where were meeting. I don’t even know your name,” I replied in a tight voice._

_He fixed his eyes on my face with an intense expression that emphasised his high cheekbones. They were a mixture of grey and green and bore into mine with the intensity of a laser sight on a sniper rifle._

_“I know you’re an army doctor and you’ve recently been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who lives in London but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic. Quite correctly I’m afraid.” His tone suddenly became lighter. “That’s enough to be getting on with, don’t you think?”_

_‘How the hell…how the hell did he get that?’ my brain screamed at me. All I could do was stand there dumbly and stare. Floored, completely, three times in five minutes._

_The man turned to leave but stopped, just inside the door._

_“The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street.” He flashed a cocky wink at me. “Afternoon.” The door banged shut behind him._

_Sherlock Holmes. The man with the laser-beam eyes. The man with no social filters in his brain. The man who would annoy me, laugh at  my habits and do whatever he wanted, regardless of the consequences for either the carpet or the budget._

_The man who would change my life._

                


	2. Chapter Two

Sherlock had talked Mrs Hudson into giving back his skull in the end – she thought it was a fair compromise after finding a large amount of spleen over the stairwell. As long as Sherlock confined his experiments to the kitchen (“and no brains!”), the skull could sit innocuously on the mantelpiece.

                Through his medical experience, John knew it was real, male and over 20, but his flatmate had never told him how and when he’d got it. It had just always sat there, staring sightlessly at the room. Sometimes John stared back and wish he was as blind as it.

                “ _It’s a skull.” I pointed my cane at the object on the mantelpiece. At first I’d thought it was a plaster cast – then I realised it was as real as my own. Except my own wasn’t sitting above the fireplace._

_“Friend of mine…well, I say friend…” Sherlock continued moving papers around – not actually tidying, just shifting. I left him to it and flopped into the nearest chair to take the weight off my aching leg and watched him. The man got weirder by the second._

_Sitting in my room the previous night I had debated whether or not to come at all. Sherlock Holmes was rude, arrogant, self-absorbed, socially inept, clearly mad and missed nothing. I, only the other hand, was an ex-RAMC doctor with a dodgy leg and some impressive mental scars, who did not like having his personal life splashed any further than the bedroom door. My head was telling me that I was making the biggest mistake of my life, that I would have no privacy with the man who knew almost everything about me from less than five minutes of one-sided conversation, that he would drive me mad and I would end up worse off than when I started._

_And yet…the man was undoubtedly fascinating. One of a kind. And for reasons I would probably never fathom, I was curious._

               

               

                When Harry had given John her phone, after the split with Clara and once he’d returned to London, John had thought less of it as a gift and more as a reminder of her existence. Ironic, since half the time she was so drunk she was unaware of his. He knew the damage she was doing to herself, could almost see the alcohol eating her body up, and since she would accept no help, he avoided her as much as possible. Call him a coward, but he just couldn’t sit and watch her kill herself and be powerless to do anything. He’d had enough of that in Afghanistan.

                They’d patched up some of their differences now Harry was starting to get clean (again), but today, if that phone rang, John, for the most part, ignored it.

                _“You’ve got a psychosomatic limp, of course you’ve got a therapist.” Obvious, the way he put it. Sat in a cab, speeding through London._

_“Then there’s your brother,” he continued. And he described every aspect of my phone, even a few I hadn’t noticed myself, and how they demonstrated that my ‘brother’ had marriage problems, was an alcoholic, and that I didn’t approve of him. The man could see everything, from the scratches on the screen denoting a careless former owner to the scuff marks Harry caused every time she tried to charge it after a bender. And he saw things in those things that defied belief – “He wanted rid of it, he left her. He gave the phone to you, that says he wants you to stay in touch. Now you’re looking for cheap accommodation, but you’re not going to your brother for help? Says you’ve got problem with him…”_

_He made it sound infuriatingly obvious. Absurdly simple. And once he’d finished, I was going to give him another lecture on manners, tell him that he couldn’t just air people’s private lives like that, and would he kindly piss off._

_Instead what came out was, “That…was amazing.” And I knew it was true. Despite myself, it was true. The man was a genius,_

_I had a small splash of smug satisfaction as I saw his features cloud in confusion. “You think so?”_

_“Of course it was. Extraordinary, it was quite extraordinary.”_

_“That’s not what people normally say?”_

_“What do people normally say then?”_

_He looked at me. “Piss off.”_

_I bit down my laugh, but couldn’t stop a smile spreading across my face. Ever accurate._

 

                John had never thought of that mobile phone in the same way again.

 

                For three years John had rattled quietly around this old flat. He had taken to sleeping on the sofa simply to save himself the trouble of having to tramp up and down the stairs during the night when he couldn’t sleep, which was always. The limp was beginning to irritate him again as well, but his cane still leant idly against the wall behind the door. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that it was a problem…again.

 

                _In half a second, Sherlock was out of the front door. I threw down my utensils and scrambled after him._

_He stood on the street, tying his scarf around his neck and watching the cab as it idled up the road. While he focused on the passenger, I took down the –_

_Then it began to move. So did Sherlock. Vaulting across the bonnet of a moving car he hared off down the street. Even months later, I couldn’t work out why I was so keen to follow._

_“I’ve got the cab number!” I said, watching the tail lights vanish into the dark._

_He wasn’t listening. Instead he was rattling off a long stream of what sounded like directions. He sounded like he’d mentally swallowed the London A-Z (which he, in fact, probably had)._

_And then we were off, over the rooftops, Sherlock’s long, flapping trenchcoat leading the way. I didn’t have the time – or breath – to wonder why it wasn’t tripping him up. Over railings, up and down fire escapes; once, terrifyingly, across the gap between two buildings, never slowing, never hesitating in his route until we’d caught up with the London Taxi._

_I never realised, until Angelo showed up later that night with my cane, that my leg didn’t hurt at all._

_Sherlock Bloody Holmes was right. Again._

 

 

                In three years little had changed about the flat. He’d had to replace the curtains after they were torn to shreds in the explosion, Mycroft had dealt with the wrecked windows and ruined carpet, but other than that everything was the same. Even the makeshift ‘crime board’ above the sofa, still bearing the results of Sherlock’s brilliant mind as he searched for a connection between the three explosive ‘voices’ of Moriarty. The tidiness was perhaps the biggest change. He, Harry, Mrs Hudson and Mycroft between them had packed away most of Sherlock’s things into storage (with the exception of a scimitar that had turned up under the sofa which John kept for old time’s sake. Sherlock had never told him the story). With only his possessions, the place looked uncomfortably bare.

                Perhaps that was why he spent so much time out of it – sometimes at Harry’s, getting her back to rights with her alcoholism, but a lot of the time at Angelo’s, to sit in that same window seat that so many things had started in.

                _What had made me chase after Sherlock, that night, when he’d driven away with a serial killer? What had made me catch a cab to the Further Education College, to search it until I saw him, to fire my gun into the cabbie’s heart through the open window?_

_Maybe it was gratitude, for bringing me back to life. Maybe it was the knowledge that, if my new flatmate died/killed himself I was back to square one. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush, making me high._

_I could tell myself all these things until I was blue in the face, but the truth remained – I shot that cabbie to save Sherlock’s life because it was, and always would be, worth saving. As arrogant, and socially inept, and untidy and rude and reckless, and maniacal as he was, Lestrade was right; Sherlock Holmes is a great man. The sharpest mind and the greatest intellect the world had ever seen. To lose that…though I had only known him two days, I knew the world would be a much emptier, much more terrifying place without it. Without him._

_He smiled at me, a genuine smile. “Dinner?”_

_“Starving.”_

 

                


	3. Chapter Three

It was never uncommon for the flat to be covered in paper. Newspaper, printed sheets of e-mails, scrawled notes in Sherlock’s long, curving, illegible script. John had never glanced at them, but during the packing away of Sherlock’s personal effects several of them had caught his eye.

                _Paint on nails consistent with wall in child’s bedroom. Mother having an affair with brother-in-law. Husband knows._

_Blood approx. 28% coagulated after 12 hours on breadboard. Full coagulation expected after two days. Get John to buy new breadboard._

                And so on in the same vein. Cases he’d never heard of, that must have been before his time. There were some that he recognised too, symbolic alphabets that were left over from the case dubbed ‘The Blind Banker.’ Squiggles and wiggles and funny shapes that looked more like the ramblings of a creative child than symbols with meaning. He knew Sherlock had drawn every one from memory, and couldn’t stop himself marvelling at his intelligence and powers of memory storage and recall. This had brought on a storm of memories and feelings it had taken four cups of tea to come down from.

 

_“I said, could you pass me a pen?” were the first words I was greeted with when I returned from the interview._

_“When was that?”_

_“About an hour ago.”_

_I had to grit my teeth to keep from swearing at him. “Didn’t notice I’d gone out then…” I muttered, throwing him the nearest one without looking. Obviously, he caught it._

_He’d hacked my computer again – it sat balanced precariously atop a pile of e-mails and papers with illegible notes scrawled over them. There was a news article up on the screen – a journalist, shot dead in his Earls Court flat, doors locked on the inside. The circumstances sounded eerily like Eddie Van Coons’._

_“You have to admit it’s similar,” I said to DI Dimmock half an hour later at Scotland Yard. ”Both men killed by someone who can walk through solid walls.”_

_“Inspector, do you really believe that Eddie Van Coon was just another city suicide?” asked Sherlock, rapidly losing patience. “You have seen the ballistics report I suppose?” Dimmock nodded._

_“And the shot that killed him, was it fired from his own gun?”_

_“No.” He replied._

_“So, this investigation might move a bit quicker, if you were to take my word as gospel!” said Sherlock loudly. He leaned forward, not quite threatening, but intimidating, certainly. “I’ve just handed you a murder inquiry. Five minutes, in his flat.”_

_With his back to me I couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine those luminous eyes boring into the young DI’s. I knew how powerful those eyes could be, and now they would be brooking no opposition. I wasn’t surprised when the answer was yes. Against Sherlock Holmes, what other answer was there? Bloody man._

_Brian Lukis’ flat was just as covered in paper as our own. Mostly half-drafted articles, reader’s digests, books, newspapers, magazines, beer bottles. Despite its ex-occupant’s travelling lifestyle, it felt very lived in and I wondered how much cleaning it got even when he was there._

_Sherlock’s eye roved over everything from the battered London A-Z on one of the side tables to the previous night’s dinner plates stacked on the paper piles on the kitchen counter, probably deducing everything from the man’s last bed partner to the state of his bank account. He crossed to the window and glanced out._

_“Four floors up,” he muttered. “That’s why they think they’re safe…”_

_Naturally, Dimmock didn’t believe a word of his theory of ‘a killer who can climb.’ But it seemed to me that it was the last plausible explanation before entering the realms of the supernatural – a killer that really could walk through solid walls. I could see Sherlock’s expression if anyone had seriously suggested that. It was exactly the same as he got when Anderson was being dense, the one that said, ‘I will allow you ten seconds of this madness before I destroy you with my logic.’ In any case, I had seen the videos of that French chap. It was definitely possible that the murderer had climbed up the bank. Mad, but possible._

_I was starting to think anything was possible, the longer I spent with Sherlock Holmes._

A military man, John had never thought it was possible for tidiness to be unnatural. But the bare surfaces, the lack of papers and coffee cups and experiments scattered everywhere made the flat seem lonelier than any tiny tent in the Afghan desert.

 

                Mrs Hudson had really started worrying when John had gone off his food halfway through the first year after Sherlock’s death. For a man who was always on at his flatmate about running out of milk, he had become awfully forgetful about going shopping. And eating. She had noticed his sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, had checked his cupboards and sink out of concern, and found no indication that he had so much as touched the plates, or food he had stocked there two weeks ago.

                With the help of the tall man with the umbrella (Sherlock’s brother, as she later found out), and Sarah, his nice boss at the surgery, they had talked him into an eating routine. Mrs Hudson had the shopping delivered, and Mycroft paid her for it. Sarah watched him at work, trying not to make it obvious. He never noticed and she kept her distance. The blank look at the back of his eyes scared her a little. It had been his laughing blue eyes that had first attracted her to him - now they were dead. Alive, but somehow dead, as if it hadn’t just been Sherlock who had died in the explosion that night.

John knew of their concern, but said nothing. After all, what was there to say? Thanks? Unlikely. He also suspected Mycroft of paying the rent as well. His job at the surgery didn’t pay much, certainly not enough to keep up with the rent per month on this flat, and feed himself, and pay the bills.

He had taken the job in the first place to supplement he own pitiful army pension. Sherlock had been useless at remembering to pay his half of the rent, despite coming from a ridiculous amount of money. John didn’t like the idea of relying on him for everything financial.

_I watched the pretty woman, around my age, scan down my CV, a little on tenterhooks as I went over it in my head. Training at St Barts, my exams, references from University Hospital London and Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, where I’d done my internships before graduating and joining the Army. A long list of skills. I knew I was overqualified. I hoped it wouldn’t wreck my chances._

_“Just locum work,” she said, glancing up at me._

_“No, that’s…fine,” ‘And so are you,’ my brain whispered. I tried not to let it distract me too much._

_“Well…” She locked over my (frankly quite impressive) skills list again, “You’re a bit overqualified.”_

_‘Damn.’ “I could always do with the money.” I certainly could, with the pile of overdue notices accumulating on the side table._

_Sarah took a deep breath and looked at me. “Well, we’ve got two away on holiday this week, and one’s just left to have a baby…might be a bit mundane for you?”_

_I thought of the mad chases I went on with Sherlock, running over rooftops and down alleyways. I thought of him pulling deductions out of people’s fingertips and the type of washing powder they used. I thought of coming home and finding that the milk had been contaminated with his latest experiments that he’d left in the fridge, or that it had gone off because he’d turned up the temperature to create ‘the perfect atmosphere.’ “No, no, mundane is good, sometimes. Mundane works.”_

Mundane was all John had now. Routine. He hated it.

 

He’d been astonished that Sarah was still around. After Sherlock’s death they’d decided to remain just as friends, since it was obvious that no amount of love and nurturing could fix John, more broken now than ever. But after that first disaster of a date, John would not have blamed her for running a mile and never glancing back.

_Through the flickering firelight I saw them uncover the lethal crossbow that had featured in the first circus act, complete with sharp,  feathered dart in place._

_“Everything in the West has its price,” Shan hissed from behind me. “And the price for her life – information.”_

_Her two henchmen, one of whom must have been Zhi Zhu, grabbed Sarah’s chair, ignoring her struggles, carrying her as easily as if she were a child to sit in front of the dart, perfectly positioned to go straight through her heart._

_“Where’s the hairpin?”_

_“What?” The throbbing in my head made me think I had misheard. ‘Hairpin? Why would I have a hairpin?’_

_“The Empress pin, valued at nine million sterling…”_

_‘Oh. Nine million quid…for a hairpin? They were about to kill Sarah over a hairpin?! And she still thinks I’m Sherlock…’_

_I tried telling her, as calmly as I could around the shaking in my voice. Not for myself, but for her. Like so many before her, she hadn’t asked for this. “I’m not Sherlock Holmes. You have to believe me…”_

_But Shan was no longer listening. “I need a volunteer from the audience!” Like a second circus, but this one far more deadly._

_Sarah began crying around her gag, and I felt so helpless watching her. I blamed myself, asking her to stay at the flat, signing her up for something she had no knowledge of. If she’d left, it would be just me in this position. Not her. Not another innocent I had to watch die._

_“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried Shan, in her ‘stage voice,’ “From the distant moonlit shores of NW1, we present, for your pleasure, Sherlock Holmes’ pretty companion in a death defying act!”_

_With her knife, she once again stabbed the sandbag swinging above our heads._

_“Please!” I spat out. Pride be damned, I would resort to begging, pleading with these people, even though I knew it would do no good, to try and save someone else from dying in front of me._

_“You’ve seen that act before, how dull for you!” sneered Shan in Sarah’s tearstained face as she leant forward and placed something in her lap, ignoring me. “You know how it ends.” There was a sadistic smile on her face which sent chills down my soldier’s spine._

_“I’M NOT SHERLOCK HOLMES!” I roared._

_“I don’t believe you!” Shan retorted._

_And then came **his** voice, his musical baritone, echoing down the tunnel, making me sag with untimely relief._

_“You should, you know. Sherlock Holmes is nothing at all like him. How would you describe me John? Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?”_

_“Late?” But my sarcasm was tempered  by utter relief bordering, ridiculously, on happiness. Sherlock was here. Maybe, now, we had a chance to live._

They had lived, and dated a few more times, but tentatively. Because Sarah had known that John, even if he said he really liked her, was Sherlock’s. He would do anything for that man. And it had never crossed his mind was that despite all his cold, aloof demeanour, Sherlock would do the same for him, a thousand times. It was an unspoken agreement between them. Taken far too much for granted.

John, now, was just a washed-up RAMC doctor, with nobody to protect. Not even himself.

 

_Putting myself in danger, time after time. To protect him, to be his soldier as well as his doctor. Looking at him across the table, drinking tea and reading the Telegraph, calm as ever, I wondered how many more lives it would cost. How many more murders would we have to face together? Hearing the gunshots at the museum had thrown me straight back into Afghanistan mode. You never abandoned your comrades in gunfire. That had cost Soo Lin Yao her life._

_I saw her in my dreams sometimes. I felt, in some ways, responsible._

_But, as stupid as it sounded, I would do it again. I would choose my comrade, my consulting detective, any day._

_After all, he’d managed to save my life without firing a single shot._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would be a nice time to mention that I am unbeta'd, so all mistakes, typos and downright inaccuracies are mine and mine alone. 
> 
> This has been a PSA, nice talking to ya.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Great Game. Well...my take on it as of Christmas 2011.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amount of theories being thrown around were brilliant, everything from bomb-blasts to snipers to Mycroft and a million other things. In the end it was the Beegees. Ah well. On we go.

It was ironic, considering John hadn’t even wanted to trust the man at first. The thought having of no privacy had scared him no end. Then he’d shot the cabbie, and moved in with the man, and there had been a subtle shift in Sherlock’s behaviour.

                True, the man was still infuriating, not least when he was bored…

                _The gunshots echoed out of the flat and down the street. I was astonished nobody had called the police – there were no cars with flashing lights pulled up to the flat as I unlocked the door and raced upstairs._

_He was lying in the grey leather chair in nothing but his pyjamas and blue silk dressing gown. My Browning was in one hand. He looked half asleep as he fired casually into a…’is that a smiley face in yellow spray paint? On the wall?’_

_“What the HELL are you doing?!” I yelled over the ringing in my ears._

_He muttered something I couldn’t catch. “Sorry, what?”_

_“Bored!” He leapt off the chair and I covered my ears as one shot, then another pounded into the plaster. Each punctuated by a loud, “BORED!”_

_He lazily handed me my revolver which I quickly stripped the magazine out of._

_“I don’t know what’s got into the criminal classes. Good thing I’m not one of them,” Sherlock muttered, inspecting his handiwork._

_‘Keep going like this and you will be,’ I thought to myself, ignoring Sally Donovan’s voice: **Psychopaths get bored** …“So you take it out on the wall?”_

_“Ah, the wall had it coming.”_

                John glanced up at the wall above the settee. The smiley face was still there.

 

                Not that everything about him changed significantly, not in John’s view. He still walked around with a blatant disregard for the wellbeing of the ‘great unwashed’ and he continued to deal with other people’s feelings in a rather ham-fisted manner. But the impossible man had softened a little. A very little. He tried.

                _“What do you mean, ‘gay’?” Molly sounded confused. I joined her in the dark. “We’re together…”_

_“And domestic bliss must suit you Molly, you’ve put on three pounds since I saw you last,” Sherlock rejoined brightly._

_“Two and a half,” she growled._

_“Mm…no, three….” He didn’t glace up, or he would have seen her murderous expression. I didn’t blame her. If someone was accusing my boyfriend…girlfriend…of being gay with no obvious evidence…well, I imagined my feature would resemble hers._

_“He’s not. Gay!” she said shrilly. “Why do you always have to spoil…he’s not!”_

_Sherlock snorted. “With that level of personal grooming?”_

_“Because he puts a bit of product in his hair?” ‘Has the man forgotten personal hygiene?’ “I put product in my hair…”_

_“You wash your hair, there’s a difference. No, no, tinted eyelashes, clear signs of taurine cream around the frown lines, those tired clubber’s eyes. Then there’s his underwear.”_

_“His underwear?!”_

_“Visible above the waistline, very visible. Very particular brand too. That plus the extremely suggestive fact that he just left his number under this dish here, and I’d say you’d better break it off now and save yourself the pain.”_

_And, of course, now he’d pointed it out, it was as obvious as a tiger on a bus._

_Poor Molly took one last look at us and fled._

_“Charming, well done,” I said sharply as the door shut behind her._

_“What? I’m saving her time, isn’t that kinder?”_

_“Kinder…no, Sherlock. That…wasn’t kind.” Even so, I was a bit surprised and just a tiny bit proud that he was thinking about how Molly would feel if she discovered further down the line that her boyfriend, whom she obviously adored, was a closet homo. Even if he was going about it in exactly the wrong way._

                Just thinking about that scene made John’s blood boil. Of course it was obvious after the fact – nobody was that obviously gay and engaging in a straight relationship. But Moriarty had been such a good actor, considering his clearly unstable mind.

                There had been other occasions as well, particularly during those puzzles. ‘The Great Game.’ Sherlock, he recalled, had been very dismissive of the hostages, to the point that John doubted that he recalled their existence. It nettled John, who had always put his patients first.

                Then he’d noticed something. Something Sherlock had said after the ‘Connie Prince Affair,’ as the newspapers had dubbed it.

                “ _I knew I could save her.”_

                John had initially thought that it was the man’s arrogance that prompted him to say that. Three years of introspection that he couldn’t quite avoid, no matter how hard he tried, had turned his thinking a little.

Sherlock had cared about the hostages. He merely chose to focus on saving them, rather than worry about them. Rather in the way John did while performing surgery, doing what was needed quietly and calmly and allowing himself to care afterwards as he witnessed their recovery. There was a special kind of pride to it.

Of course, it wasn’t Sherlock’s only motivation. John knew the glint in his eye, the one he got when he was really excited, working on an interesting case…Moriarty and Holmes. Two sides of the coin. The genius detective and the criminal mastermind. Put the two of them together and…

John buried his head in his hands and took a deep, tear filled breath as the memory, so long supressed, threatened to overwhelm him.

_As I walked down the street, I whistled a jaunty little tune. Sarah had texted me, telling me that she wanted to see me now our latest case seemed to have wrapped itself up. I was more than willing to get out of Sherlock’s company, especially since he had spent most of the evening yelling at the incompetence of most of the talk show hosts. Amusing though it was, it had palled after around two hours._

_I was buzzed in at the front door and took the stairs two at a time. I liked Sarah and the mere fact that she still wanted to see me after the incident with the Black Lotus spoke volumes._

_Her front door was unlocked. That was the first clue that something wasn’t right. All my military training kicked in and I lamented leaving my gun at the flat._

_Easing the door open a centimetre at a time, I took stock of what little I could see. The lamps were on, it all looked fairly normal, and yet…_

_The blow was calculated, the blow was swift, the blow came from the back and was dealt by the man who had been hiding in the lift behind me. I blacked out before I hit the floor._

_When I came to, I was sitting in what appeared to be a cubicle, wearing a large, uncomfortable parka. My head throbbed and my right ear felt oddly heavy and muffled. The air smelled of chlorine. ‘Why am I in a swimming pool?’_

_I was completely bewildered. Then an oddly familiar voice spoke into my blocked right ear._

_“Take a look at what you’re wearing, Johnny boy.”_

_The sound my sister’s old nickname for me sparked off all kinds of profanities in my head, but I looked down at what lay beneath the thick coat. Even though, deep down in my heart, I already knew._

_Semtex. Packs of the stuff, covered in wires and blinking lights. Moriarty’s bomb vest. I felt my knees go weak._

_“You know the drill, Johnny. Say anything I don’t tell you and my sniper will detonate you, blaaah, blaaaaah, blaaaaaaah. I know you wanted to go out with a…bang…and I think you’ll agree, this is one hell of a bang, baby.” The lilting Irish accent almost sang the words into my ear. I felt sick. I could guess what all this was for._

_“Ready, Johnny? Stand up.”_

_I had no choice._

_Then a familiar voice echoed around the pool._

_“Bought you a little ‘getting to know you’ present!”_

_Sherlock._

_“Oh, this is what it’s all been for, isn’t it? All your little puzzles, making me dance…all to distract me from this…”_

_I could guess what ‘this’ was. Mycroft’s memory stick. Lying twat. And yet, I couldn’t blame him. We were in this together now. Somehow, I felt this had been Moriarty’s intention all along._

_“Walk out of the cubicle now…” came the Irish accent in my ear._

_Show no fear. My soldier voice said. Collecting myself, I took a deep breath and walked out of the changing cubicle._

_I saw him turn. Divested of his stupidly long trench-coat and scarf, he seemed wafer thin, and porcelain white against the tiles and pale light refracting off the swimming pool. Delicate. Exotic. A fly in a web._

_“Repeat after me. Evening.”_

_I kept my voice as steady as I possibly could. A slight shake. “Evening.”_

But it was the conclusion of that encounter that John replayed in his dreams. It had replaced many visions of Afghanistan. He preferred the war dreams. There was more death, yes. But the deaths accumulated. They blurred into one. No death had been as sorely felt as this.

_“People might talk.” ‘And now you’re laughing about it, Watson. You’re turning into him.’_

_Sherlock shrugged. “People do little else.” And then he smiled. A smile of pure joy at the conclusion of a rollercoaster ride. I could see the exhilaration on his eyes, and knew it was mirrored in my own smile._

_Then I noticed the dancing red light on my chest. And another, and another. Sherlock was also dotted with them, bright against his dark suit._

_“Sorry boys,” sang an Irish accent from the far end of the pool. “I’m sooooooo changeable”_

_We turned to see Moriarty appear from the far door. “It is a weakness with me, but to be fair to myself – it is my only weakness. You can’t be allowed to continue. You just can’t.” His voice became utterly sane towards the end of the sentence. Somehow that was more terrifying than his sing-song taunts._

_Then he giggled like a child. “I would try to convince you, but…everything I have to say has already crossed your miiiiiiiiind…”_

_I didn’t doubt it._

_Sherlock looked at me, just a sideways glance with his eyes. ‘Shall we?’_

_I nodded. ‘Do it.’_

_“And probably my answer had crossed yours.” Sherlock turned gracefully and aimed my pistol, with the same accuracy that he had pounded the holes into that smiley face, at the semtex vest lying prone at Moriarty’s feet._

_Moriarty smiled. A smile that said, ‘Go on. Do it. I dare you.’_

_Sherlock dared. His finger tightened on the trigger._

_The shot fired. But instead of a ball of fire rising from the vest there was…nothing._

_Nothing but silence and gun smoke._

_Moriarty laughed. A high pitched cackle of pure madness. “Of course it’s not real, Sherly-boy. You think I would have you and that gun in the same room as me and those explosives?” He giggled again. “Really, Sherlock Holmes. I had you down as smarter than that.”_

_It suddenly sunk in that I had been terrified for my life and that of my flatmate…because of a lump of playdough. I couldn’t process it._

_The vest sat there, like a dog at the feet of its mocking master_

_Sherlock just stared at him._

_The mastermind still smiled. “Well, that vest is fake…But OOPS! It looks like it’s not the only one in the building.” His smile was psychotic._

_“The…” Sherlock’s eyes widened as the wall behind me exploded in a ball of fire._

 Moriarty had only detonated one pack of C4. Enough to blow the wall out, but not enough to damage him. By the time Lestrade and the rest of the emergency services had arrived, he was long gone.

John had been told, while recovering from concussion and several broken bones in hospital, that he had been saved by the pole at his back. It had pushed him into the water and kept his internal organs more or less intact.

Sherlock had been hit by large amounts of falling debris as well as the concussive blast. He hadn’t been so lucky.

After that, everything passed in a blur…discharge from hospital…closed casket funeral…cremation service…faceless family members…three years without Sherlock.

 

 

                 

                


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And thus comes the canon-divergence. Or maybe not so much, we don't know about season 3 yet. Sherlock's PoV.

“God, what is inside your head, because it’s certainly not a brain! She’s shielding someone; it’s obvious from her perfume! I can guarantee you it’s one of Moriarty’s people…Look; it’s something far too expensive for her general dress. Cheap skirt, shoes, coat, and perfume at 120 euros a bottle? She’s being paid to cover for somebody! Use your head!” His French is perfect, his voice is exasperated.

                The voice on the other end is muffled.

                “Oh for God’s sake Inspector, I’ve just handed you the lead! Now go and…do whatever your job is, I have thinking to do.” The man hangs up and flops onto the sofa.

Chill winds sometimes blow across Normandy from the English Channel, particularly along the coast. They rattle the windows. The sky is darker at this time of year and the safe house is gloomy, the only light coming from the lean man’s cigarette. Sherlock has given up nicotine patches while on the run as they’re more or less his trademark. The less attention he draws to his real identity, the better.

                The people who own this cottage are Mycroft’s and know who he is, but to the world and his wife, he’s Simon d’Holvard, a freelance journalist backpacking around France. Before that, in Russia, through Bosnia and Germany and into Holland it had been Martin Sigerson, a Norwegian travelling salesman. Before that…alias after alias. Sherlock deleted each one after they had served their usefulness. Keep moving, keep changing, keep one step ahead of Moriarty’s people.

                Of course it hasn’t been easy. There have been close encounters in Singapore, Florence and St Petersburg. Sniper spots to lose, traps to see through. He had been trailed across Italy by a brilliant team it had taken all his powers of thought to lose. Eventually, after stealing three separate mopeds and being chased across the rooftops in a thrilling free-run, he’d lost them in airport security. But he’s kept his ear to the ground, working undercover, sometimes with Mycroft’s agents, sometimes alone. And gradually, Moriarty’s organisation has been dented. Drug-smuggling rings shut down in Italy. An illegal diamond mine closed in South Africa. Arms dealing tracked across Russia and the Middle East, their supply lines eventually cut in Afghanistan. And so on, bleeding dry Moriarty’s financial arteries, all but forgetting his former life in London.

Though not quite. Through Mycroft, Sherlock has enlisted the help of a group of soldiers for his mission in Afghanistan. In camp, one of them had brought up an RAMC doctor he’d once known.

                “Genius, he was. ‘Ands you wouldn’t think could stitch up these really fiddly wounds in the middle of an engagement, and never so much as a tremble. Rather like you in some ways, Mister ‘olmes.”

                “Mmm.” Sherlock was thinking and had more or less tuned it out. But he woke up at the next words.

                “Yeah, you know. You got the same kind of steadiness. Such a shame when ‘ee got shot. Watson, ‘is name was. John H Watson.”

                Sherlock  didn’t allow his face to show any emotion, something he’s had plenty of practice at, but for all his ‘high functioning sociopath’ exterior, he knew that the flush of emotion he felt was a mixture of sadness and…loss.

Loss is a new one. He’d made a mental catalogue of it. He’s tried not to think of John in three years, choosing instead to focus on Moriarty’s many franchises. But in that Middle Eastern tent, and again, now, in a dark cottage in Normandy, he finds himself reflecting.

Though he’s tried not the think of John, he cannot prevent him intruding on the situations every now and again. When he needs an outside eye, when he needs someone to bounce his ideas off, when he needs a companion. When finds himself between cases and he feels…lonely. He meant what he’d said to John, the morning after the first explosion, a lifetime ago.

_I’d be lost without my blogger._

He watches the blog, but there has been nothing new in three years. No word from John. He’s alive, as Mycroft tells him, he still works at the surgery and lives in Baker Street. And that’s all he knows.

Perhaps this is fairer. After all, he’s led John all these years to believe he’s dead. But he can’t think of John as dead. Merely, waiting. Sherlock doesn’t know if John will wait. He doubts it.

The cigarette smoke makes the already dim light in the room dimmer. Sherlock sits back and takes another long drag. The light flares, then dies. He forces his mind back to the matter in hand. His phone bleeps. The message is from the French detective inspector, brief and to the point.

_Tout les suspects en garde._

Sherlock takes a deep breath.

It has taken three long, hard years that have taken their toll on his body and mind. However, he feels it’s nearing its end. Moriarty has been worn down, his syndicates and people beginning to disband and collapse. Sherlock knows he will return to London, because that was what Sherlock would do. And Moriarty knows it is Sherlock who had destroyed him, and he wants Sherlock. Specifically, he wants Sherlock dead.

 So, to London it is. First thing in the morning.

Sherlock seizes his phone and presses the speed-dial. “Mycroft.”

“Ah, Sherlock. I trust you bring me good news.”

Mycroft was never ‘off the job.’ “I’m coming back.”

Silence. “You are…returning to London?”

“Yes, Mycroft, that’s generally what ‘coming back,’ means,” Sherlock said sharply. He is in no mood for Mycroft being slow today.

Fortunately, his pedestrian attitude doesn’t last long. “I shall text you with the necessary arrangements.”

Sherlock hangs up and goes back to thinking. He needs a plan, he needs Moriarty and himself, in one final confrontation. He needs…he needs John.

It’s true, Sherlock realises, that no matter how well he has coped on his own and no matter what happens with the mastermind in the end, he needs his blogger. After all, two heads are always better than one, even when one of the heads is Sherlock Holmes’.

Sherlock gazes across the grey English Channel and thinks he’s been dead for far too long.

He also thinks that, if John still has that pistol, he may want to borrow one of Lestrade’s bulletproof vests.

The thought makes him smile properly for the first time in three years.

 

 

 


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so on ff.net someone called me out on one detail in this chapter, which is Sarah's meeting with Ella which is in breach of doctor-patient confidentiality. Therefore I am employing major artistic licence and apologise in advance to anyone who might get offended (seriously, I'm doing psychology at uni and I really should know better. However...)

                John took a glance around the waiting room as he passed through it on New Year’s Eve. The usual rabble of colds and flus interpreted as pneumonia (of the kind that, no matter what you said, the patient was correct). People panicking just in time for January and a new cycle of work and play. Inwardly he sighed – he had a feeling this was going to be another long day in a series of long days.

                “Morning Dr Watson,” said the secretary as he passed, her usual disgustingly cheerful self. He nodded without really acknowledging her.

                He shrugged on his coat as the kettle boiled with his morning tea.

                “John?” Sarah entered the kitchen. “You okay?”

                “Yeah, good…good.” He didn’t glance up, concentrating on his cup.

                “Good Christmas?”

                “Not really.”

                Sarah didn’t push the matter. This was the most John ever said in the morning. Just enough to be civil, yet he made it clear that the last thing he wanted to do was talk.

                She worried about him. She wouldn’t put him as a suicide risk, not as such, but since Sherlock’s death he had withdrawn to the point of virtual silence. It had come to the point, about a year ago, that she had sought out the number of Ella, his old therapist. The two had had a private chat over coffee in Ella’s consulting room one afternoon.

                “When John first came to me, he was thought to be suffering from PTSD, though I suppose you already know that. He had major trust issues, so I suggested the blog to try and give him an outlet for what he was feeling, as well as being a tool to make sense of ordinary life again. He’d done two tours in Afghanistan, he was used to that life – in fact, I’d go so far as to say he loved it. I wasn’t expecting him to come out of his…depression, I suppose you’d call it – anytime fast.”

                “If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’dve said you were talking about two different people. But John…he went from a happy person who seemed like he was enjoying life to…this shell, after Sherlock…his flatmate…died.”

                Ella nodded. “I read his blog. I admit, after he met this…Sherlock Holmes…he seemed to wake up. His commander had told me of his nerve and confidence, and I started to see that coming back out.” She smiled. “Holmes seemed to be a better therapist than me, in the end. Even he psychosomatic limp cleared up within a few hours.”

                “He had a limp?!”

                “Hard to believe, isn’t it? And now…” The pretty black woman went quiet for a moment. “He’s gone back to beyond square one.”

                The two women sat silently, cooling coffee cradled in their hands.

                “What can I do?” Sarah asked quietly. The words hung heavy in the large, sparse room.

                “Nothing. From what you’ve told me, I doubt anyone could reach him now.”

                Sarah watched John exit the room and recalled that conversation. She had tried, but Ella was right. Only Sherlock could reach him now.

                “Take care John,” she whispered to herself as much as to the man walking away from her.

               

Just before lunch, a man entered the waiting room. His coat hood was up and damp, due to the wild sleet falling outside. He crossed to the secretary. “Which room is Dr Watson in today?”

                “Let me check. Do you have an appointment?”

                “No…no I’m not a patient, he asked me to call around. I have his…phone, he left it at his flat.” He sounded flustered, dressed in a shabby pair of jeans, an old jumper and an anorak. Clearly in a rush. May as well let him through.

                The receptionist looked at her screen. “Room 4”

                “Thank you.” He turned and swept away down the hall. She picked up the phone and dialled Room 4.

“Doctor, there’s a man coming down who wants to see you. Says you left your phone at the flat.”

There was quiet on the other end of the phone. “Right…okay then. Does he have a name?”

“He didn’t mention one.”

“Right…okay, I’ll wait for him.” Watson hung up.

The receptionist wondered briefly if she’d done the right thing. Then the phone rang, and the receptionist promptly forgot all about Dr Watson’s mysterious visitor.

 

                The day was going just as John had suspected. “It’s just a cold, Mrs Watkins, nothing to worry about, take some aspirin…Winter cold, Mr Callaghan, nothing to worry about…He’s caught a mild bought of flu, keep him in bed for a couple of days…” On and on and on…the curse of being a doctor in the wintertime.

                His break was coming up. One of the doctors had dropped off a load of medical files that had needed sorting, before she got word that her sister had gone into labour and had had to rush off. John had volunteered. Anything to keep his mind occupied, no matter how deathly dull the job was.

                He glanced at his empty teacup. ‘Another brew before I start, I think.’

                He was about to walk out when the receptionist rang down to say that somebody wanted to see him, that he’d left the phone that was quite firmly situated in his pocket in his flat. 

                John was flustered for a second, remembering all the times Sherlock had done this kind of thing, when in reality he’d dragged him out of the fire escape and of on another case. Then he recalled what had happened to Sherlock, and wondered who, or what, was coming to meet him.

                John stood up. If it was Moriarty’s lackeys again, he wanted to be prepared.

He walked to the door, just as it opened to six feet of mad, rake thin, curly haired, very much alive consulting detective, with pale laser beam eyes.

                John dropped his teacup as his knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor.

 

 

                


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angsty reunion alert...

_“Come on John, steady now…”_

That voice…so familiar. The world was a funny way up. There was a kind of thrumming in his ears. _He’s dead. He’s been dead for three years…and I appear to be lying in his arms…_

John shook his head to try and clear it. He tried to get his feet underneath him, to stand up, but he appeared to have lost all the feeling in his knees.

“Sh...Sh…Sher-lock?”

“Come on, John…” Strong, sinewy arms supported him as he stumbled to his feet and collapsed into his desk chair. Taking deep breaths, John looked at the man who knelt opposite him.

If possible, he appeared to have lost weight. His cheekbones stood out more and his porcelain skin had an even paler tinge to it. But his eyes had lost none of their intensity, and were still of no obvious colour. In the light of the sterile, pale blue room, they appeared a clear, sky blue. The same steadiness shone out of them as he looked at him. 

“Well,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting that.”

“What were you expecting?” John was astonished at how normal his voice sounded.

He looked abashed. “Something a little less…melodramatic?”

“Will this do?” John drew back his arm and slapped him.

Sherlock stumbled backwards, holding his face.  “Something like that.”

They stared at each other, either side of the room. John spoke first.

“Three years.” His voice was a snarl. “Three. Bloody. Years.”

“John…”

“Don’t you ‘John’ me, I thought you were fucking DEAD!” His voice rose to a shout. “And all this time…you’ve been…” John spluttered to a halt. “I thought you gave a damn. Guess I was wrong then.”

“John, you must understand…”

“No, YOU must understand. High functioning sociopath or not, you must understand, that you don’t swan off for three goddamn years leaving your best friend thinking you’re DEAD!” He was on him feet by now, leaning heavily on the desk. The complete shock was tempered with…anger, yes. Annoyance, definitely. But also…relief? Joy?

Sherlock seemed to have run out of words. He had his hands in the pockets of a battered anorak. Coupled with his worn jeans and walking boots, with his hair all a mess, John would not have recognised him if they had just passed in the street. No, that wasn’t true. He would never forget those eyes. Now they were a light grey as he stood in the door, and almost…contrite? He took a hesitant step towards the doctor.

“I…I think I probably owe you an apology or two. And an explanation.”

“You think?” John muttered.

The clock told him there was still three quarters of an hour left on the lunch break. He took another deep breath.  “Go on, then. What the hell have you been playing at?”

Sherlock sat down in the patient’s chair. “When they pulled me out of the rubble, Mycroft put me in a private hospital while they fixed my…injuries. He managed to keep my continued existence a secret, partly at my behest and partly at his own.”

“Why at his own?”

“He suggested…that it would be better if my existence was kept a secret to…help me take down Moriarty. And I agreed.”

John glared at him.

“Mycroft got me out of the country, and since then I’ve been travelling the world. Taking down his syndicates, one by one. I have some thrilling tales to tell.”

“Bollock to your tales, it doesn’t explain why you upped and abandoned us for three years. I went to your bloody funeral, I watched your mother cry at the cremation…” Brief pain flashed in Sherlock’s eyes. “Just tell me why, Sherlock. Tell me why I wasn’t worth trusting. Tell me why you left me behind, when you’ve allowed me to come with you every other time.”

“Think about it John. Moriarty is still at large. If I remained in the open, he’d always be one step ahead. I’d never catch him. And he would keep his promise.”

_I will burn the heart out of you._

“Hang on, let me get this straight. You left…” John blinked. It didn’t make sense. “…because of something he said?”

“John, really. Who do you think he was referring to if not to you?”

John blinked again. “So you left…for me?”

“Oh good, you follow.”

John felt a flush of annoyance and amazement at the same time. “I don’t need you to protect me.”

“No, you don’t, but I need me to protect you.”

These words brought John up short.

“John, you’re my right hand. My best friend...I’ve never had a friend.”

“Mrs Hudson. Lestrade. Dimmock certainly admires you…”

“I mean someone like you. Someone who can…put up with me. Someone who has stuck by me. I know I’m not the easiest man to live with and John…I count you as my one true friend.”

“And yet you left me in the lurch for three damn years,” John muttered. 

“That’s why I’ve come back now. I need you.”

“Oh, now you need me,” John snapped.

“Yes. John, I…I missed you.”

Floored, John blinked again.

“I meant what I said to you, three years ago. I am lost without my blogger.”

The words echoed through the years, and suddenly, to Johns utter annoyance, it was as if nothing had changed. Suddenly it was Holmes and Watson again, against the world, together.

“What’s happening, Sherlock?”

“Moriarty’s back in London. I was watched when I returned to Baker Street this morning…”

“Sorry, you’ve been back to the flat?”

“Of course. It’s been watched for the last year. Didn’t Mycroft mention?”

“No…why should he have?”

“Mm, true…anyway, Moriarty knows I’m back. My guess is that he will try and meet with me sometime, and sometime soon. He’s a broken man. His syndicates and franchises have broken down and he knows it is my doing. But listen, John.” He leaned forward in earnestness. “This will not succeed without you.”

For a second, John hesitated. He had trust issues, had always had trust issues. But not when it came to this man. Even being put through the mill by him couldn’t shake John’s faith in him. It was the strangest thing and yet John would never question it.

 John looked into the eyes of his friend. Sherlock watched him and smiled. Of course the infuriating man would know at a glance everything he was thinking.

 

_In for a penny, in for a pound. Watson, you’ve gone soft._

_No, I’ve gone mad. Not necessarily in a bad way._

“What do I have to do?”

And three years of hardship melted away as blue eyes met grey and Sherlock’s smile split into a grin. John felt himself wake up inside as the familiar fire crept into his heart.

 

 

 

                


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short n' action packed, rather like one of my flatmates.

In the first explosion, three years ago, the houses directly opposite 221B Baker Street had been completely destroyed. The landlord had gone bankrupt and the house had been covered with tarpaulin and left, since nobody would buy a house with the possibility of a faulty gas main. John had gotten used to seeing the flapping blue sheet during his three years virtual incarceration. He never thought he’d be seeing it from the other side.

                Sherlock’s plan had been pretty much standard for Sherlock Holmes - dangerous, quite mad, and utterly brilliant. Admittedly, there had been some objections on John’s part; “Jesus, Sherlock, I’ve only just gotten used to you being alive! And now you’re going to use yourself as live bait?!” But, ultimately, here he was, and, though he thought he was going mad, he hadn’t felt so alive in three very long years. His blood was flowing, his heart pounding despite the chill air. John Watson could breathe again.

                He could see the detective, silhouetted in the window of their flat against the overhead light. He was rattling around, being Sherlock, probably putting all his papers back in a large heap. John couldn’t stop himself chuckling, despite his worrying.

                He checked his watch. Still half an hour. He glanced down at the street, deserted at this time of night on New Year’s Eve. He listened for sounds coming from the empty, draughty house. Nothing, but the wind whistling and moaning up the staircase. It couldn’t be much longer now, surely…

                Sherlock was pacing around the flat, keeping in sight of the windows, glancing at the clock every now and again. Why did time have to be so slow? He had so many thoughts running around his head, in addition to looking at the wall for sniper spots. Is the room not bright enough, or are they blind? Look at me, I’m a target!

                He grabbed his phone. Tell me something’s happening. SH. A number he hadn’t used in years.

His phone buzzed again only two minutes later. Text from John.

                Nothing yet. Calm down. JW.

                Despite the simplicity of the message, it made him smile. He’d missed this.

                He glanced at the clock. It was time.

                There was a knock on the door. It opened slowly to reveal the sardonic smile of Jim Moriarty.

 

                John was watching the flat. Only one silhouette. There could only be one silhouette shaped like that. He could see the consulting detective getting more and more agitated as nothing happened. John hoped he wouldn’t cause a false alarm and start throwing things into the wall. He was glad his Browning sat safe in his pocket.

                Something creaked behind him. John froze.

                There was no doubt, somebody was climbing the stairs in the empty house.

                Something had gone horribly wrong.

                John pulled his Browning from his pocket and turned to face the gaping doorway. It was pitch dark, he couldn’t see anything, or anyone, or…

                Suddenly, something rushed him from the shadows, knocked him over and pinned him to the floor. An unfamiliar voice growled in his ear as cold metal was pressed under his chin.

                “Game over, Doctor Watson…”

 

 


	9. Chapter Nine

                “Congratulations, Sherlock,” said that high, mad voice, as far removed as possible from the stereotype of the warm, Irish brogue. “I’m in ruins. You’ve bled me dry.”

                “That was the object of the exercise,” said Sherlock, trying to sound bored, though his mind was yelling, _No, this is wrong, this shouldn’t be happening, what went wrong? Where is John?_

“Oh, John’s gone. You won’t be able to help him now.

                As if to punctuate his words, a single, muffled shot echoed over the empty street.  Sherlock felt something give just below his sternum. _John_.

                “You did well, you know. Brought me to my knees. It’ll take me years to build up that kind of empire again. But I must ask you, Sherlock…was it really worth it?”

                The two men circled each other, like predators. Sherlock, the panther, lithe and graceful. Moriarty, the jaguar, hidden in the trees. Each locked in the other’s gaze.

                “You know the police are on their way. There’s nothing left of your ‘business’ anymore It’s over, Moriarty. Finished.”

                “Is it?” sang the mastermind. “Oh, no. You’re the one with nothing, darling. You left your heart behind, for three years, while you ruined me. And now you’ve got me. Very good…oh yes. Very good. But you had to wreck it all at the final hurdle, didn’t you?”

                “Spare me the mind games, Jim. What ‘final hurdle?’ What are you on about?”

                “It’s over, yes…for you. See, I’ve kept my promise. My associate has seen to John, and now it just remains for me to see to you.”

                He had crept closer now. “The flirting’s _long_ over.  I’ve been watching you, Sherlock Holmes. I saw you, when you went into that surgery this afternoon, to find your little friend. You went obvious after you met him. I knew he’d be the first person you went to would be your little soldier pet.”

                Sherlock had had plenty of practice controlling his facial expressions. He allowed none of the thoughts and emotions churning through his mind to show on his visage. _Of course. Stupid. The man at the bus stop. There when I went in and still there when I came out._ But he was more angry about the use of the word ‘pet’ John was many things, but he would never be Sherlock’s _pet._

                “So how much good did leaving do, in the end? He came running back to you, your little dog, only to be put down.” Moriarty’s mad eyes burned into Sherlock’s. No gun between them now. “I’ve won. I have burned your heart out.”

                “You’ve still lost your empire. Your reputation.” Sherlock maintained his calm demeanour, but it was getting harder and harder. Moriarty was right. With John gone…Sherlock could think of 543 reasons why not to carry on, and not a single reason why he should. “Can’t you just accept that I’ve destroyed you?”

                And then Moriarty laughed. A shrill, maniacal laugh. A laugh so utterly devoid of warmth that it would send chills down the spine of the bravest soldier. “You don’t get it, do you? Did you think I would just stand by and watch my business fall, section by section? Did you think you were invisible, Sherly?”

                Sherlock went very still.

                “So…” he said quietly. “We’re still in the game.”

                Jim giggled. “Just so. And it’s on my rules, darling. As it always will be.”

                And Sherlock saw it all, so clearly. Three years sorting false trails from real leads, the lack of retaliation from Moriarty himself. The followers, the distractions…Moriarty was playing a long game. But why now?

                “I love a touch of the dramatic as much as you do, pretty boy. This final showdown, just you and me…the perfect end, to the perfect game.”

                And, in Sherlock’s mind, suddenly it all made a perverted kind of sense. Of course a game of this complexity needed the final flourish on it, like one of those terrible James Bond films John was so fond of.

                “No Browning L9A1 to shoot me with now, sweetheart. Just this.” And Jim pulled a pistol from his pocket, complete with silencer. “I’m going to kill you now, Sherlock Holmes. I’m going to leave my very own special message by the body, so the whole world will know it was me. And then I’m going to start again, and undo every good bit of work you’ve done. And guess what?”

                Moriarty was facing Sherlock now, who had his back to the plate glass window. He leant close and hissed, “ _There is nothing you can do about it._ ”

                He levelled the gun at Sherlock’s heart. There was a shot.

 

                John lay prone beneath the man with the gun as he allowed his body to reach a state of centred calm. He’d done this a lot in Afghanistan before going on patrol or onto the battlefield, or into the surgical tent.  It gave him utter clarity of thought.

                He brought his knee up between the other man’s legs. The man gasped and rolled off him as John sprang to his feet and felt around in the darkened room for his gun. It was nowhere to be found. The man (who also appeared to have lost his gun) leapt onto his back from behind and locked arms like bands of steel around his neck.

John felt his air cut off and his brain start to lose focus. He gasped for air. The two men wrestled for a moment before John fell to his knees and threw his assailant over his head. At the same moment, his fingers found his pistol.  He levelled it at his attacker, lying winded on the floor.

“Who are you?” he snarled breathlessly, thinking around his still spinning head.

“Sebastian Moran,” the lackey gasped.

“What are you here for? To kill Sherlock?”

In the darkness, John could just about see the man’s face twist into a grin.

“No, Doctor Watson. To kill…you.”

Like lightning, the man pulled a knife from the fold of his coat, the blade gleaming in the dim light at the edges of the tarpaulin. He made to rush the army doctor.

The shot was deafening in the confined space. The man collapsed, a smoking hole blown through his forehead.

John turned his attention to the bright light in the window of the flat. He knew he didn’t have much time. People would have heard that shot, and he knew Lestrade was around somewhere. In no time, he would be coming to investigate. John had to move fast.

The curtains were open, as per the plan. Sherlock had his back to him. Moriarty stood opposite. That was when John knew just how wrong their plan had gone.

Sherlock was supposed to be waiting in the flat, an obvious target for a sniper. He had reasoned that Moriarty would want to do the job himself via sniper rifle, working from the shadows like the snake that he was. The convenient ruined houses opposite provided the perfect hide. John was to have taken him down as soon as he arrived.

Now the live bait had been taken, by a much bigger fish.

Moriarty held a pistol in his hand, levelled at Sherlock’s heart, and suddenly John was three years younger, gazing across at Sherlock, his mad new flatmate, face to face with a serial-killing cabbie, about to take a poisoned pill.

_I hadn’t hesitated then. I didn’t hesitate now. Déjà vu took over as I aimed the gun across the wide gap._

_I was the crack shot in my division. A friend of mine had told me I should join the snipers, that I was wasted in the RAMC. But the RAMC was what I was made. Saving lives. Sometimes by taking them. So it was a simple job to aim past Sherlock at Moriarty’s heart._

I pulled the trigger.

 

Sherlock felt a burst of déjà vu as a shot whistled past him. Moriarty staggered back as a red hole blossomed over his heart. Then he made that same comical expression of surprise that he had beside the pool, so many months and years ago. “Oh good. Very…good.”

Then he lurched forward into Sherlock. Caught off balance, they fell backwards…and smashed out of the plate glass window.


	10. Chapter Ten

John was already down the stairs and out of the back door as the two men fell, so he never saw the accident himself. It took him around five minutes at a dead run to get him back to Baker Street, wondering if Sherlock was okay, where on earth Mrs Hudson was and what the hell had happened to Lestrade and co. The sight he saw as he rounded the corner was one he never wanted to see again.

The window was broken, the curtains flapping out into the street. Shards of glass glittered on the pavement and the awning above Speedys’ a tattered ruin. But John couldn’t see any of this. His sole attention was focused on the broken, bloody heap on the cold, hard pavement of Baker Street.

John’s feet seemed to be moving of their own accord as he dashed across the street and knelt by the pile. _No, Sherlock. Don’t you dare, I just got you back…I shot him, Sherlock. We did it._

But at what price?

Sherlock was sprawled on top of Moriarty. There were no obvious injuries, but his eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. John moved aside the rumpled shirt collar, sprinkled with broken glass, and pressed two fingers to his neck. _Come on Sherlock, please…I can’t go through that again. Don’t make it all for nothing…_

There! Faint, but undoubtedly a pulse. John pulled out his phone and dialled 999 on fingers shaking with relief.

“Yes, ambulance, please…” His spare hand was flying over Sherlock, doing a rudimentary check for broken bones. “Yes, hello, I need an ambulance for Baker Street, 221B Baker Street. My flatmate and his…well, they’ve fallen out of the window. Please, hurry up!” He hung up the phone before anyone could reply. Lights were coming on in houses, people emerging from front doors to watch the spectacle.  Not that there was much to see. A dead man, an unconscious man, and an ex-army doctor, indistinct beneath the street lamps.

Most of the blood seemed to be Moriarty’s. He lay on his back, neck clearly broken, his shirt soaked in the red liquid. His brown eyes were open as he stared into nothing. Reflexively, John checked for a pulse. Nothing. They’d done it.

Suddenly Sherlock groaned and shifted. John bent over him. “Lie still. God knows what you’ve done to yourself, but you don’t want to make any breakages worse.”

“ John…you’re alive?” came the muffled, musical baritone.

“Well of course I am…why shouldn’t I be?”

Deliberately ignoring John, Sherlock rolled himself off the body, hissing in pain as he did so. John caught him and lowered him gently to the ground, diagnosing at least one cracked rib as he did so.

“See what I mean, you great prat?”

Sherlock smiled weakly. “Mori…arty?”

“Dead. I checked.”

“Good…shot.” Sherlock’s eyes fluttered closed as he slipped back into unconsciousness again.

Somewhere, on the cold winter’s night, a church cock tolled in the new year.

 

Obviously, they arrested John at the scene – there was a dead body on the pavement and his gun was still, stupidly, in his back pocket. Some obliging locals had called the police and, though Lestrade had been on standby, they hadn’t been able to get here faster than the local patrol car, and by the time they had gotten through the roadblock set up, John and Sherlock were both long gone – one in an ambulance, the other to the police station.

John didn’t care. Moriarty was dead, Sherlock was alive and, even if there was a lengthy court case, they’d come out the other side with the best result possible. Sitting in the police cell, which smelt of disinfectant rather than the multitude of bodily fluids which must have been spilt in it, he could stop a wide smile cracking across his face. The muscles hurt from years of disuse. John didn’t care about that either. He was smiling again and just knew everything was going to be alright, no matter how long it took.

It took three hours. Mycroft Holmes was a fast worker.

The cell door banged open to reveal a hassled DI Lestrade. “They’re dropping the charges John. You’re free to go.”

John didn’t stop to wonder what the man had done. He would put nothing past Mycroft and was often better not to ask when it came to that man.

 

“So, what the hell actually happened?” Lestrade continued as they walked out into the crisp night air.

“To cut a long story short, Sherlock came back, and we set a trap for Moriarty that went a bit wrong.”

The DI gave a bark of laughter. “I reckon that’s a first for Sherlock Holmes.”

“And probably a last as well,” John chuckled.

“I still can’t get over the shock he gave us when he walked into Scotland Yard this morning. I thought I was hallucinating. Anderson fainted. Not even Sally had anything to say.”

John laughed again. Everything normal then. Well…as normal as it ever could be around Sherlock Madcap Holmes.

The black car was parked incongruously by the side of the station, but John recognised it as soon as they saw it. “Greg, can you give me a second…” Not waiting for a reply, he moved rapidly towards the vehicle.

The door opened and Mycroft Holmes unfolded himself from the back seat, his extra weight likening the movement more to a horse than his cat-like brother.

The two men regarded each other for a minute, the memory of the last three years hanging between them like an unwanted picture.

“Thanks,” said John reluctantly after a while. “For, you know…bailing me out.”

“It’s no trouble. In fact, I must be the one to thank you, Doctor. It seems, once again, that you are responsible for the continued existence of my younger brother.”

“Well that’s never all down to me, is it?”

Mycroft chuckled. “Indeed. Well, we can’t expect you to take all the credit now, can we?” His voice abruptly became serious. “I must ask you, John – Sherlock plans to move back into Baker Street once he is discharged. Do you plan to continue with your former living arrangements now he has returned?”

John hadn’t even considered it. “Yes I do. I didn’t know that was an issue.”

“I though perhaps, given the state he left you in, you may wish to consider an alternative arrangement.”

John recalled that Mycroft had been there watching, the whole way through his silence and withdrawal. And, considering how angry he had been and the slap he had given Sherlock (had it really only been yesterday afternoon?), it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption that John wouldn’t want to move straight back in with him immediately.

Not unreasonable, but completely wrong.

“No. I’ll continue living in Baker Street. With Sherlock. I don’t care how long he’s been away. That flat’s empty without him in it.”

Mycroft nodded. “I hoped you’d say that. He was asleep when I saw him, but he was muttering. You know he sleep-talks?”

Despite his antipathy towards the man, John chuckled. “Wouldn’t know, I never saw him sleeping.” He made a mental note to film it if he ever caught it. The Yarders would find it hilarious.

“He was saying, ‘Don’t  leave me. I’m sorry, John. I won’t run away again. Please.’ And so on, and so forth.”

John felt a little lurch in his stomach, that Sherlock would think that he would abandon him again that quickly. If tonight showed anything at all, it was that Sherlock needed John, and John needed Sherlock. There would never be any question of their partnership.

“Well, I won’t. And I’ll tell him so myself in the morning.”

 

John hitched the heavy plastic bag higher on his arm as he climbed the stairs to Sherlock’s private room. He knew he was getting close – the staff looked more and more harried the closer he got. John had treated Sherlock many a time after cases – he was not the easiest patient by a long shot.

He no longer looked so pale against the white hospital sheets. There was a healthy flush to his cheeks and he was sitting up in bed, his cracked ribs strapped up, his arm in a sling, flipping through the TV channels.

“Dull…dull…dull…obvious…boring…she’s cheating…ex-partner did it…dull…dull…”

“Knew it wouldn’t last.”

“What?”

“Getting you into crap telly.”

Sherlock grinned, and made no reply except, “What’s in the bag?”

John tipped a pile of puzzle books, crosswords, and Sudoku onto his covers. “Let’s see how it takes you to get through that lot.”

Sherlock picked one up, looking bemused. “Why?”

“Call it an experiment.” John sat down in the uncomfortable plastic chair by the bed.

They sat quietly for a few moments, each privately cherishing the other’s face.

“He told me you were dead,” said Sherlock eventually, matter of factly. “I didn’t believe him…and then I heard the shot.”

“Oh, that. I, um…I shot his lackey through the forehead. Moran, he called himself.”

Sherlock nodded. “Moriarty’s right hand man. Ex-Army, like you.”

“Ex enough to be very out of practice.”

He looked John in the eye. “And then you shot him.”

John steadily regarded his best friend, bandaged in a hospital bed.

“I thought you knew I’d kill for you by now. Shot that cabbie for you, didn’t I? Would’ve shot the Golem too.”

“Yes but…you were so angry with me earlier…”

And John burst out laughing. The man really was impossible. He was the world’s best (and only) consulting detective but here, in this situation, he was more like a child facing the possibility of having his sweets taken away.

“What, what are you laughing at?”

“You, Sherlock. For all that memory and ‘massive intellect’ you can be so dense. I’d prefer you alive to dead, even if I’m cross with you.”

“Are you still cross?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. But, ultimately…I understand why you did it.”

“So you’re not going to…move out? It was a logical assumption. I assume Mycroft told you.”

“Yes, he did, and no, I won’t. You need me, Sherlock. You know you do. And…I need you.”

Sherlock blinked, rapidly. “No-one’s ever needed me before.”

John smiled. “You’d be surprised.”

Awkwardly (which was a strange sight for John – Sherlock Holmes, awkward), he held out his good arm.

Carefully, gently, so as not to jolt his ribs, John wrapped his arms around the detective, and they stayed like that while the crap played on the TV, and outside the window, the clouds parted for just a second to let in the sun.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice fluffy ending for you. Thanks for reading!


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